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Four-year-old shoots four-year-old cousin dead in Detroit

Jon Swaine

Crime scene: A police vehicle outside the house in Detroit the boy was shot. Photo: AP

New York: A four-year-old girl in Detroit shot dead her young cousin as they played with a gun, in the latest in a series of similar deaths across America.

Police said the boy, also four, was shot in the chest after the children found a rifle under a bed in a family home. Their grandfather was elsewhere in the house. The boy was dead on arrival at hospital.

Describing the shooting as a "tragic, tragic accident", Captain Rodney Cox said the death was avoidable.

A Detroit Police vehicle is parked in the neighbourhood where a four-year-old boy was shot with a rifle by his four-year-old cousin. Photo: AP

Captain Cox said the department stood behind responsible gun ownership, but "preliminarily, this does not appear to be responsible gun ownership".

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One man is in custody on a charge of being a felon in possession of a weapon, and a woman is in custody on an outstanding warrant.

It is unclear whether charges will be brought as a result of the shooting.

Olivia Queensbury, a neighbour, said that the victim was "fun to be around" and "a good little boy".

Dozens of American children die in accidental shootings every year.

An investigation by Mother Jones magazine last month found that 194 under-12s had died in the past year from gunshot wounds. Of these, 127 died from incidents in their own homes. At least 52 involved a child handling a gun that had been left unsecured.

Officials at the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention found in the late 1990s that American children were nine times more likely to die in gun accidents than children in other developed countries. They have since been banned from researching gun violence under pressure from the National Rifle Association.